Seems to be one of those writers with a gift for writing but insufficient wit to use it for anything more than sarcasm and cynicism.

Funny how so many of these specimens gravitate towards the 'critic' industry.

No doubt he also writes witty yet stinging attacks on practically every show & movie that he's seen as well as on every meal he's eaten and on every country he's traveled to.

I guess his peptic nature is fueled by the fact that his own literary achievements are used to insulate fast food less then a day after publication.

The same fate probably awaits my own ventures into type, but at least I've written as effusively as I can about things that make me smile.

In the Daily Telegraph today there is a list of the 50 best cult books of all time. At least there is no Joyce on the list. The Fountainhead is included, but the description is written by that idiot Tim Martin again!

He writes,

"The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943)

Bewilderingly popular and extremely silly Nietzschean melodrama, in which Ayn Rand gives her mad arch-capitalist philosophy a run round the block in the person of Howard Roark, a flouncy architect. Loved by the kind of person who tells you selfishness is an evolutionary advantage, before stealing your house/lover/job. TM"

However, Rand isn't the only one who gets it in the neck,

"The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951)

Ur-text of adolescent alienation, beloved of assassins, emos and everyone in between, Gordon Brown included. Complicated teen Holden Caulfield at large in the big city, working out his family and getting drunk. You’ve probably read it, be honest. TM"

"Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1883-85)

Incendiary declamation through a megaphone. If only one knew what he was on about. Put six Nietzscheans in a room and it ought to be a bloodbath; except, since they’re all nancies who fancy themselves as Supermen, there wouldn’t be one. Nietzsche was brave and mad enough to kill God: but look what happened to him. His acolytes are, largely, less brave. AMcK "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/04/26/nosplit/...

Well I'm currently reading Ulysses. Started it in 2004, pick it up about once a month now; thank God for bookmarks.

"Linz knew the rest of Joyce's writing was 'rubbish' in the same way Prince Valliant 'knows' that Joyce's work is 'childish,' 'dumb,' and 'absurd' - by osmosis,..."

"To taste the ocean requires but a single drop."

(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

The closest I've ever gotten to Joyce was in bookstores and conversations with manifest Eloi.

You couldn't get me to buy any of it with a gun to my head.

This "quotation" comes from Richard Ellmann's 1959 biography of Joyce (p. 535). It is quoted in turn from an interview Ellmann conducted with Jacques Benoist-Mechin, a French journalist and Vichy-era politician, who was in turn "quoting" from a memory of a conversation with Joyce. In that conversation, according to Benoist-Mechin, Joyce made this comment "humorously."

He may have been laughing at the thought of all those silly pretentious twats arguing over what he meant. And after all, it's exactly what happened. Silly pretentious twats arguing over what he meant.

Since the passage was quoted out of context, it was impossible to determine whether there was some larger artistic purpose Joyce was attempting to serve by clotting the layers of meaning in this manner.

There you go.

"Clotting the layers of meaning." Hahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!

Lois Cook, of course, was based on Gertrude Stein, not James Joyce. And Stein's methods and purposes were entirely different from Joyce's. But Linz and his lackey wouldn't know this, either.

Can't speak for James, but I certainly knew Cook was based on Stein. So what? Rand despised Joyce equally. Rubbish that differs in some way from other rubbish is still rubbish. All rubbish still comes under the generic concept, "rubbish." But anti-conceptual mentalities wouldn't know this.

Mr. Scherk? Remember all that bluster about any one example doing?

Feeding the irrational only encourages it.

No, though selected by the randomness of both the text and my memory of it, your passage was "out of context" -- of course, we can't reproduce the whole darned thing -- and "uncharacteristic" of his other work -- though we're still waiting for a defense of even Portrait, of course. Just one little "mechanism" (and it's impact) might be nice. As stupid as the cited passage is, it's we "Randroids" who get the personal attacks for some reason -- just as predicted -- for daring to call the absurd "absurd" or the dull "dull." I suggested laughing your ass off -- but, now, I am "humorless." Etc.

Bluster layered upon bluster.

"I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality."

— James Joyce

This "quotation" comes from Richard Ellmann's 1959 biography of Joyce (p. 535). It is quoted in turn from an interview Ellmann conducted with Jacques Benoist-Mechin, a French journalist and Vichy-era politician, who was in turn "quoting" from a memory of a conversation with Joyce. In that conversation, according to Benoist-Mechin, Joyce made this comment "humorously." (Little did he know that humorless Randroids would appear on the scene later to take his jest with complete seriousness.)

All this is new to the redoubtable Linz, I'm sure, since, like his lackey, Prince Valliant, he knows next to nothing of what he speaks. Valliant, as we know, was finally able to come up with a vague memory of an uncharacteristic passage in Joyce (it's characteristic of Finnegans Wake, but uncharacteristic of the works on which Joyce's reputation principally rests), and he has now proudly offered this as evidence for his claim that Joyce's work is "childish," "dumb," and "absurd." Once someone else went to the trouble to find the vaguely remembered passage for him, it became clear that, in fact, all the Prince had come up with was a passage rendered obscure by the many layers of meaning piled onto it. Since the passage was quoted out of context, it was impossible to determine whether there was some larger artistic purpose Joyce was attempting to serve by clotting the layers of meaning in this manner. Given that the passage is from Finnegan's Wake, of course, it's entirely possible that it *was* merely a set of verbal games for their own sakes, that it had no larger point. But this is something you will *not* find in Joyce's earlier works, including Ulysses.

"I read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a young man (13) because one of my teachers who was a bit of a rebel slipped me a copy, saying he thought I'd enjoy it. I did, but I never bothered with the other rubbish. Life is too short to waste on Lois Cook."

Linz knew the rest of Joyce's writing was "rubbish" in the same way Prince Valliant "knows" that Joyce's work is "childish," "dumb," and "absurd" - by osmosis, the highly developed ability to identify the politically correct Randroid line on "modern literature" without ever bothering to read any.

Lois Cook, of course, was based on Gertrude Stein, not James Joyce. And Stein's methods and purposes were entirely different from Joyce's. But Linz and his lackey wouldn't know this, either.

Permit them their ignorance and their arrogance, I beseech you. It's insufferable, of course. But, hey! It's all they've got.

JR

"I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality."

— James Joyce

I read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a young man (13) because one of my teachers who was a bit of a rebel slipped me a copy, saying he thought I'd enjoy it. I did, but I never bothered with the other rubbish. Life is too short to waste on Lois Cook.

"Childish" does capture the level of intellectual effort -- indeed, imagine a drunk child for much of it -- but, I concede, not the pathos of the human tragedy involved when the author is considered. The man was not so excruciatingly stupid as this reads, Mr. Scherk.

When that is reflected upon, the humor goes, too.

I know many people who are educated with enough obscure references to have constructed the same kind of senseless puzzle from random spewings over a period of time.

I would become deeply concerned if one of them ever did.

No, taking this nonsense seriously is too grim a business for me.

...thanks for the comments.

Tim,

It's almost hilarious to think that any woman would run for the hills at the sight of the word "Capitalism". However, I would guess that you were later relieved at the unexpected reaction.

William,

It is quite refreshing the responses that article got in the Telegraph, surprisingly better than the American NY Times responses, eh?

Here are two absolutely superb responses (they aren't from one of us, are they?)

"Ayn Rand's regular cropping up on the list of American lit-haters is perfectly understandable. Her characterization of the superficiality of the members of the so called cultural elite in both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged is spot on and oftentimes hilarious. This understandably hits to close to home for any un-reformed book-snob."

and...

"Literati books snobs (most of whom doubtless suffer from narcissism) hate Howard Roarke because he wears no mask and he plays no games. For narcissists people like Roarke are the equivalent of truth serum that's forcibly injected with a long painful needle. Of course they hate him...they hate themselves, but they can't admit it. It's so much easier to ignore truth and pretend that the problem is someone else!"

The collection of contemporary reactions to Joyce's last book by other famous writers (quoted from Wikipedia) is priceless. I'd merely like to add that Nabokov's view of Finnegans Wake, while not universal, is quite common. Even many (perhaps most) ardent Joyceans draw the line at that work. What real influence Joyce has had in the literary world has been based on Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Ulysses - not Finnegans Wake, which is atypical of Joyce's work in a number of important ways.

JR

Thanks to Marcus for the links. The amount of anti-Rand comment on Donaldo's Paper Cuts blog was amazing. Mind you, Rand enthusiasts jumped to her defence in the Telegraph's comments. Funny how none of the Randites noted any deal-breakers of their own.

That a gush of mating juices might be corked by 'the wrong book' on the bedshelf . . . I dunno. It rings true if only in extreme cases. I brought one affair to a close when the lovely young man brought Whitley Schreiber's Communion for a sleepover and wanted me to believe.

I found Joyce's Ourania reference on the Google Books Finnegans Wake page. A screencap of the offending paragraph below.

This excerpt can stand as a buttress to whatever our James needs to fulminate about. I am struck by the inventiveness of language. There are some good neologisms here. It might be horrid but childish it ain't. In any case I recommend both A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners to anyone who is not content to merely deride Joyce, but who is put off by the phantasmagoria in the two last novels.

For those who might actually contemplate gagging through the rest of this book, Wikipedia has a great page up to guide study. James, do you think you can top these guys?

Literary critic and friend of the author Oliver Gogarty called it "the most colossal leg pull in literature since Macpherson's Ossian". When Ezra Pound was asked his opinion on the text, he wrote "Nothing so far as I make out, nothing short of divine vision or a new cure for the clap can possibly be worth all the circumambient peripherization." D.H. Lawrence declared, in reaction to the sections of the Wake being published individually under the title "Work in Progress"; "My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage-stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest, stewed in the juice of deliberate journalistic dirty-mindedness -- what old and hard-worked staleness, masquerading as the all-new!" . Vladimir Nabokov, who was a renowned admirer of Ulysses, described Finnegans Wake as "nothing but a formless and dull mass of phony folklore, a cold pudding of a book, a persistent snore in the next room [...] and only the infrequent snatches of heavenly intonations redeem it from utter insipidity." Martin Amis has also dismissed the novel as a '600-page crossword clue'; he sometimes adds, 'Whose answer is "The".'

WSS

Random selection will almost do, right? Okay, assuming one is armed with annotations and commentaries -- something one cannot do without when reading Finnegans Wake, for example -- and you come across "the United Stars of Ourania," if I am recalling correctly -- and you get the classical reference, stars on the flag, that the stars are in "Urania," the heavens, and you get the other possible puns here -- and then another such turn of phrase -- "love philtre" for filtered love -- or, if you know enough Latin to see that "Primum opifex," from another section, is another play on words from "pontifex maximus" -- and, thus, you are capable of stringing a number of such puns and word games together -- after seeing to what end his classical education was put -- one is still left wondering: why, oh, why did I bother looking up a hundred references to partially sort out an endless word salad?

The entire exercise seems simply one step up from the "ur-anus" or "fartus maximus" jokes that children really do make.

At best, it offers the occasional pleasure of a limerick to the well educated man.

Or, do you want whole... well, what pass for "sentences"?

In answer to Marcus' original post, yes I have had a real live walk-out because of a book. Reisman not Rand was to blame. That huge banner down the spine, CAPITALISM, did me in.

Mr. Scherk, I am capable of civil discourse. I am not sure JR is, though.

The accusations that came packaged with his "challenge" don't inspire "discussion" of any kind. This is where I refuse to play his silly game.

And your own inability to see an argument from authority has been well-documented.

Since you seem to realize that there's plenty in Joyce to supply here, why don't you do it? Or, do you?

Empty bluster is what I predicted and empty bluster is all we got.

The ugliest kind.

James Valliant:

... what another great demonstration JR gives us of the "book-snobs-don't-bed-Rand-fans" kind of approach to literature, eh?

Er, no.

I had hoped you would find some particularly awful passage, chapter, book or something from Joyce's oeuvre to fork up in all its loathsomeness, tedium, difficulty, childishness and utter horror and evul. This would have capped your initial point and vanquished your antagonist.

Instead of giving us some detail you call JR a dip shit, asshole, dick, etcetera.

This is your online persona at its worst, James. Here's what you first put forth:

For a healthy belly-laugh at the childish, the excruciatingly dumb and the absurd, of course, one can do no better than Joyce, Proust and all the other stark naked emperors of contemporary lit.

You could have rustled up some perfectly apt Joyce to extend your statement about lit and snobs and etcetera. Adding all the epithets to your original unpleasant rant is just so plainly you jerking yourself off. Bah.

WSS

... what another great demonstration JR gives us of the "book-snobs-don't-bed-Rand-fans" kind of approach to literature, eh?

Isn't modern bullshit all too predictable?

No, it's not so complex that he couldn't -- if he wanted to -- explain to the dolts here at SOLO, but, since I am obviously so illiterate, he needn't bother...

That's about as childish as it gets, friends.

The obsessive focus with me and not the subject tells us something, too.

Again, this is all precisely as predicted before he showed up, you will observe.

"What he seemingly cannot do is explain any of those complex 'mechanics.'"

They aren't all that complex, but I expect they're too complex for you.

"Or, to what end these mechanics can be used, what actual effect it [sic] has [sic] on... er, the reader. Etc."

There is no "the reader," of course. All readers are individuals. Different individuals have different premises, different senses of life. (Some readers, like Prince Valliant, are borderline illiterate, as their writing shows.)

Readers, being individuals, will differ on what they find entertaining, "readable," etc. This is why talking about "the effect" any given literary device is going to have on "the reader" reflects an extremely primitive stage of thought with regard to literature (or any of the arts).

But why should I have expected anything else from someone who claims to have read Ulysses but can't think of a single specific about it that he could adduce as "evidence" for his absurd claims?

JR

Oh, dear! It was all just a dream, my fellow students at La Canada High and Ms. Walden's English class! We never did read that stuff after all! (Are you reading Bob and Mark...?) And, my friends at NYU, we never actually did read that other stuff, either!

Just one of those weird "shared" dreams, I guess.

Lying about "lies" is a sign of ugly desperation.

But what a lame-ass dick!

All he can do is issue (inaccurate) insults against someone he obviously does not know even slightly.

What he seemingly cannot do is explain any of those complex "mechanics."

Or, to what end these mechanics can be used, what actual effect it has on... er, the reader. Etc.

And I wasn't aware that Rand liked all the writers on my own list, either.

Before this dick ever showed up, I promised that empty bluster would be the first defense.

JR has delivered.

So far, this certainly has shown just how juvenile Joyce fans can be, at the very least.

Combining his ignorance with his arrogance (always a winning combination), Valliant writes:

"Maybe it's this consideration for the reader [exhibited by Twain, Scott, Stevenson, Rand, et. al.] that I, as a reader, so appreciate. It is certainly the self-indulgence of gross self-absorption that I find childish."

Translation into plain English:

"Maybe it's their willingness to write their novels in a style I can easily understand without having to think or do any other mental work that I, as a lazy oaf, so appreciate. The very idea of expecting me to put any *effort* into my attempts to be entertained! The nerve of it!"

Even so, one has to acknowledge that, at last, Valliant has vouchsafed us a sort of half-assed answer to my questions about all the works by Joyce he so unconvincingly claims to have read. Where is the "childishness" in Joyce, I asked. And now Valliant has given an answer - sort of. Joyce's childishness is in his "self-absorption."

I see. And where is his "self-absorption"? Can you cite a passage, a chapter, a specific example?

Of course not, because, as has become quite clear by now to anyone reading this thread, Valliant has read next to nothing by Joyce and doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. He feels honor bound to take the position on all this that he believes Ayn Rand would have taken, but since he's read nothing and knows nothing about the subject, he's struggling.

Oh, he keeps up with the feeble lies. I "would be blown away," he writes, "at the sort [sic] of classes and education I enjoyed, you dumb fuck."

Perhaps so. What a pity you're too stupid and arrogant yourself to have benefited from any of it.

"Yes," Valliant intones, "even as a teen I was exposed to some Joyce and Faulkner."

You mean someone carried a couple of their books into a room where you were sitting?

"And I can't resist mentioning the semester in high school during which we read, as part of our assignment, the whole of both The Fountainhead and The Grapes of Wrath -- granted, both are readable books -- for the purpose of contrasting collectivism/individualism in American literature."

Your lies are getting a little better, Valliant. At least this time you've chosen long novels written in a basically simple style that can be read quickly even by an inexperienced reader.

Nonetheless, though his prowess at prevarication is showing a trace of improvement, Valliant is upset. I have provided, he says, no "answer of substance to the question of Joyce's value -- a mystery still to the poor reader of this thread."

Not to any reader who can actually comprehend what he reads. Joyce's value is in what we can learn from him about the mechanics of organizing narrative and about certain of what the aforementioned Robert Louis Stevenson called the "technical aspects of style in literature." A reader interested in those topics (and in others related to them) will find Joyce of inestimable value. A reader not interested in such arcana will find most of his work rather dull.

JR

Let's hear it for the skill of the great "storytellers": Hugo, Scott, Twain, Stevenson, Wells, Verne, Rand (and, if I may, Fahy.)

This is a "mechanics" I'll bet lots of us can actually explain, discuss and appreciate.

Maybe it's this consideration for the reader that I, as a reader, so appreciate. It is certainly the self-indulgence of gross self-absorption that I find childish.

JR can't read too well, can he? Certainly not as well as he can "read in" whatever bullshit he wants. Go back, dude, and read my post more slowly, and you maybe can avoid simple errors of basic sentence-comprehension. (Hey -- maybe it's all that Joyce you read?)

Also, you would be blown away, from what I can tell, at the sort of classes and education I enjoyed, you dumb fuck. (Yes, even as a teen I was exposed to some Joyce and Faulkner. And I can't resist mentioning the semester in high school during which we read, as part of our assignment, the whole of both The Fountainhead and The Grapes of Wrath -- granted, both are readable books -- for the purpose of contrasting collectivism/individualism in American literature.)

And, gosh, so lacking in any possible answer of substance to the question of Joyce's value -- a mystery still to the poor reader of this thread -- that JR lobs what he has seen will get me to close down discussions -- an irresponsible accusation of dishonesty.

But the emperor is still very much naked.

Being an asshole won't hide this fact. And ugly screeches and yells won't cover up that glaring omission for you, either, JR.

Riggenbaath,

"His assertion that “Ulysses is continuously ranked by Ayn Rand hating lit-snobs as being the best book of the 20th century” is true as far as it goes. But what this has to do with anything under discussion here is beyond me."

My God, you are a moron. You haven't even read what this thread is about.

"Why did you crawl out from under your rock on this occasion?"

I started the thread. Again proving that you are a moron who can't be bothered reading what this thread is about.

Do I care what you think?

No, I try not to think of you at all.

Nobody in history has ever been assigned to read the nearly eight hundred pages of Ulysses in a survey course. When Joyce appears in a survey course, it's one of the short stories - usually "The Dead" or "Ivy Day in the Committee Room." Ulysses is an entire course by itself.

I went to school in the '60s, when standards were a bit higher than they have been lately. I was an English major, and even so, I was never required to read Ulysses. I read it on my own, and have reread portions of it many times over the years. Valliant claims to have read both Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist, but still (conspicuously) is unable to offer even a single example of the "childish," the "excruciatingly dumb," and the "absurd" that he claims to find in Joyce's work.

Why am I not surprised?

JR

Can I call it, folks, or what? Right down to the lame insults.

I had a law school professor who once silenced a long-winded classmate's stunningly irrelevant response with the following line, apt for obvious reasons: "That sounds to me like an awful lot of words, but very little meaning."

I was required in school, mind you, to read Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist, and, later, all on my own steam, I slogged through the nonsense of Finnegans Wake, perhaps just for purposes of conversations like this one. So, yeah, I can say that I am somewhat familiar Joyce, dip shit.

The whole of Remembrance is vast, but I've read a good deal of Proust, too, sir -- but, again, not out of love, I assure you -- and Swann's Way was only the first step of a long and fruitless journey for me, asshole.

I don't know when you went to school, but survey English Lit classes still generally climax with Joyce -- and all I meant to say was that he enjoyed idol status today -- as your own comments adequately enough demonstrate.

You'll further note that I also included the profoundly boring Henry James (and might have also included Flaubert) on the list of writers I cannot abide.

"As a storyteller" you agree that Joyce worthless, but, of course, this was necessary to keep any credibility whatever.

You add -- with ominous echoes of Tom Wolfe's Painted Word -- that one "needs help" to grasp Joyce's major works. Obviously, the professional help I was provided was unable to point out the virtues here, so why do you try, JR?

His virtues, you claim, are in "the mechanics of fiction"? Like what? Clarity?

"Mechanics" designed FOR WHAT? The mechanism as an end itself?

So, give it shot.

If -- for the "ordinary reader" -- Joyce has "little to offer," then let me suggest that he has "little to offer."

See, people actually enjoy reading Shakespeare, Milton and Dickens.

'Least I do.

And I can tell you why.

Here, we can see the ultimately self-referential nonsense that is modernity! Writers writing for writers stuff that no ordinary reader will ever get...

That is, assuming you can even tell me what literary "mechanics" are so brilliantly on display that the average reader fails to appreciate them!

You say other writers made good use of this shit, like Faulkner. Hmm. Even Sound and Fury is comparatively readable, of course, but this -- it is claimed -- is the worthwhile upshot of Joyce -- i.e., his impact on a better writer who is himself only style wrapped in style to little end. At least for Faulkner, there is some discernible poetic effect to some of it, "Caddy smelled of leaves..."

BUT IT IS STILL BASICALLY CRAP.

No, he doesn't have to be a storyteller to provide some value. I love poetry, too. Yvor Winters and Emily Dickinson are my favorites.

Again, I can tell you why they are my favorites.

I have asked you, JR, what is the value of Joyce, and I haven't got an answer yet. "What" -- not "to whom" -- was the question. So, your challenges will have to wait -- at least until we get a non-"emperor's-new-clothes" answer out of you. He's still naked from where I stand.

But I did get all of the empty bluster I predicted.

In the beginning there was James Valliant. And James Valliant wrote:

“For a healthy belly-laugh at the childish, the excruciatingly dumb and the absurd, of course, one can do no better than Joyce, Proust and all the other stark naked emperors of contemporary lit. Like the rest of the fraud of modern art, in reality, these are the shallowest of waters passing as deep only because they are so damned muddy.”

In a moment of madness, never dreaming that Valliant, of all people, would challenge me to say more, as though he were actually interested in engaging me on this issue or any other (ordinarily he ignores me on my infrequent appearances on these boards and writes back-channel messages to other people, advising them not to engage me on any issue at all because I am “uncivil”) – never dreaming, as I say, that Valliant of all people would conceive a sudden, unaccountable interest in my ideas, and (as I say) in a moment of madness, I commented on Valliant’s observation, noting that “it would be very difficult to find a more ignorant remark.”

Now let us begin by considering just what Valliant actually said. (I’ll confine myself to Joyce for the moment and leave out Proust – I haven’t read enough Proust to venture a worthwhile opinion – and neither has Valliant. I’d bet he never even reached the end of Swann’s Way.) He said that Joyce is one of the “stark naked emperors of contemporary lit,” that his writings are “childish,” “excruciatingly dumb,” and “absurd” – “the shallowest of waters passing as deep only because they are so damned muddy.”

The first absurdity here is the reference to “contemporary lit.” The idea that a handful of books that first saw print nearly a hundred years ago – Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), and Ulysses (1922) – is part of “contemporary lit” is richly comical, of course, and I guess we should give thanks for the fact that at least Valliant’s posts yield up a little comedy, since they yield up nothing else of any value. Nevertheless, I must cavil a bit on this score. Not only are the works in question far too old to be considered “contemporary,” but they also have very little influence on actual contemporary literature in the English speaking (and reading) world. Oh, you could make a case that the fashionable short fiction of our time (fashionable among self-consciously literary people, that is) is firmly in the tradition of Dubliners: short psychological studies, long on characterization, short on plot, aiming constantly for the precise image, the poetic phrase – fiction that combines the close observation of traditional Realism with the focus on individual psychology and the preoccupation with verbal artistry characteristic of writers in the Symbolist tradition.

But this kind of fiction did not originate with Joyce. In Dubliners, his first book, he wasn’t trying to originate anything. He was intent upon showing how well he’d learned to write a certain sort of already existing, already widely celebrated fiction – the sort of fiction that, to his mind and to the minds of literary readers all over Europe and America in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, was most closely associated with Gustave Flaubert and, to a lesser extent, with Flaubert’s longtime friend, Ivan Turgenev. Flaubert’s methods were extended in the short story form by his devoted protégé, Guy de Maupassant. Turgenev’s very similar methods were extended in the short story form by his own illustrious follower, Anton Chekhov. In the English-speaking world, something quite similar had been undertaken for decades before the first publication of Dubliners by Henry James, who wrote both novels and short stories. These writers were Joyce’s models in Dubliners. He wanted to win acceptance in the literary world by showing what a polished, sure-footed performance he could give as a practitioner of a type of fiction people throughout Western Civilization had already accepted and praised wholeheartedly for half a century.

And it was a polished and sure-footed performance. I agree wholeheartedly with James Heap-Nelson’s endorsement of Joyce’s first book. The most famous story in it, deservedly, is the last one, “The Dead.” It is a small masterpiece of the sort of “symbolist realism” Joyce was attempting. It would be famous among literary people, even if he had never written anything else. But “The Dead” alone would not have brought Joyce any notoriety among educated people generally – only among those few who happened to learn about and read the story. What Joyce’s larger reputation is based upon is the books he wrote after Dubliners, especially Ulysses. But the experimental narrative techniques demonstrated and, in some cases, pioneered in that work, the literary innovations and adaptations that made the book so famous and have kept it so for almost a century, play very little part in any of the fiction currently fashionable among self-consciously literary people. That is, the more experimental side of Joyce, the side of Joyce most educated but non-literary people know about and associate his work with, has very little influence in actual contemporary literature (that’s as opposed to the entirely imaginary “contemporary lit” to which Valliant refers) in English.

This is because most literary people don’t actually read James Joyce. Instead, they loudly proclaim his greatness. That way they don’t have to read him themselves and make up their own mind. Literary people are a lot like other people, when you get right down to it – the path of least resistance, Epstean’s Law, all that sort of thing. Literary people don’t read Joyce because he bores them, and because in his later work, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, they can’t even be sure they’ve understood him. These are the same reasons most people don’t read Joyce. The sales of his books since his death are a tribute to how many books academics can sell by requiring their students to buy them. Maybe this is what Valliant means by saying that Joyce is an “emperor of contemporary lit”? That his books are taught in a lot of college courses? An odd way to use language, if so. Of course academics love Joyce. He has enormous historical importance in the development of fiction in English, and his most famous book (Ulysses) is difficult or impossible to read if you don’t seek help – either from a professor or from the various printed guides to Joyce’s work that have been put together over the years. Writers tend to like Joyce, too, especially critics and fiction writers. The fact is that his chief value is to people who want to study the mechanics of fiction. You can learn more about that from a careful reading of Ulysses than you can from any other single book (though Henry James’s Art of the Novel is also very valuable, as is The Craft of Fiction by Percy Lubbock, James’s editor at Scribner’s).

For the ordinary reader, however, Joyce has precious little to offer. Broadly speaking, there are two skills that go into novel writing. One is writing itself. The other is storytelling. As a writer, Joyce was one of the greatest geniuses in the history of our language. As a writer, as a literary technician, he’s in the same category with Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens. As a storyteller, however, he’s singularly unimpressive. He had almost no talent for storytelling at all. It took other novelists – Faulkner, Ross Lockridge, Jr., Nabokov, Samuel R. Delany – to make use of Joyce’s revolutionary techniques in stories that actual readers have found it interesting to read.

My guess is that Valliant has read little or nothing of Joyce, himself. Let us ask him, shall we? How much Joyce have you read, Valliant?

If you’ve read much at all, you know that there’s nothing “childish,” “excruciatingly dumb” or “absurd” in his work. If there is, if you’ve actually done some reading and found something that qualifies as “childish,” “excruciatingly dumb” or “absurd” there, name it! Under “childish,” you aren’t thinking of the first few pages of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, are you? Where he tries to depict the consciousness of a small child as experienced by the child? Did you really think the whole book was like that? In any case, I can’t prove a negative – the proposition that “James Joyce’s work is not ‘childish,’ ‘excruciatingly dumb’ or ‘absurd.’” I need a specific example to work with, to disprove. So indulge me, Valliant! Prove you’ve actually read some of what you’re shooting your mouth off about.

I need offer no such challenge to Marcus Bachler, who informs us, in the manner of a proudly illiterate barroom lout, that “Joyce is complete shit” and “an over-rated pomo-wanker.” Admittedly, this is comical in its own Beavis-and-Butthead sort of way, and once again perhaps we should be grateful for such comedy as we can glean from these otherwise quite worthless posts. The humor in ignorantly calling Joyce, one of the original High Modernists of nearly a hundred years ago, a post-modernist is, however, about as entertaining as Marcus’s contributions get. His assertion that “Ulysses is continuously ranked by Ayn Rand hating lit-snobs as being the best book of the 20th century” is true as far as it goes. But what this has to do with anything under discussion here is beyond me. I’m a lit-snob, but I’m an Ayn Rand-loving lit-snob. I think Rand was one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century. And I don’t think Ulysses is anywhere close to the best book of the 20th Century. It’s enormously interesting, if you’re interested in the nuts and bolts of narrative – if you want to write fiction yourself, or if you want to write about it in an analytical manner, or if you just want to improve your skill as a fiction reader, so you don’t wind up like Bachler, dismissing as “complete shit” any writing you can’t understand – but it’s far from the best book of the century. Atlas Shrugged comes a lot closer to that honor, in my judgment.

Bachler has a final question or two to put to me, and I suppose I ought to answer those as well. “Why the hell should anyone here care what you have to say?” he demands. Oh, I don’t know. Maybe, unlike you and Valliant, they’ve read some of my stuff and know I sometimes have some interesting things to say. Maybe they know what an utter clod you are and figure if you hate me so much, maybe I have something interesting to say. Otherwise, I’d say they don’t have much reason to care one way or another.

Then there’s Bachler’s final question: “You flounced off from this site years ago, why do you come back now?” I come back from time to time. Usually you ignore me when I do. Why did you crawl out from under your rock on this occasion?

JR

"You do fully accept the legitimacy of the verdicts of popularity contests, don't you?"

Not in the case of ancient Greek stonemasons, no.

"Be it a question of science, metaphysics, or religion, the man who says: 'What is truth?' as Pilate did, is not a tolerant man, but a betrayer of the human race."-Jacques Maritain

...why the hell should anyone here care what you have to say?

You flounced off from this site years ago, why do you come back now?

Just got back from a bridge party to find that my brief comment on Joyce had touched off a mini-firestorm of controversy. Just so the egregious Valliant is aware of it, I'm too tired to post more tonight, but I'll be back again tomorrow and I'll have more to say then about James Joyce and about Valliant's egregious ignorance.

JR

First, note how he arbitrarily imputes an ignorance to his opponent --

Arbitrarily? Surely, you jest!

and, then, how he proceeds to assume some significance to the mere fact that "a sizable" if otherwise undefined "group" does, or "would," for some unknown reason, find something "acceptable" or not --

Sometimes the mere fact that a sizable group finds something acceptable is of the first significance - for example, all that matters to the outcome of an opinion poll or popularity contest is the majority view. You do fully accept the legitimacy of the verdicts of popularity contests, don't you?

and that we should not only care but, seemingly, that we should take for granted that this sets the standard of truth.

I said no such thing. What most people think or do does not determine the truth of a matter - except, of course, when the matter in question is what most people think or do. And when it comes to metatheism, the question of what the term 'God' means is determined by what most people think or do. So the methodology you dismissively label "this kind of stupid argument from authority" is entirely appropriate.

When "intelligible" is a virtue, we're in pretty deep.

Just why should anyone think it so great?

Just what color, for example, is the emperor's fine, new suit, anyway?

And, please, from the material, not any "consensus" about it.

And, please, tell me more than "he broke conventional forms," without, that is, indicating to what end he did so. And, then, we'll still need to know why would should read him at all, i.e., what are his positive values -- and the specific virtues by which he obtains them?

The real trick Objectivists have never mastered is empty bluster.

So, they must try sneer us out of existence -- our demand for clear answers is a threat to their entire sham.

...Joyce is complete shit. I have never read the Dubliners and supposedly that is intelligible, but who cares, the man was an over-rated pomo-wanker.

Ulysses is continuously ranked by Ayn Rand hating lit-snobs as being the best book of the 20th century

Jeff's done some good literary criticism. I hope he does start a Joyce thread, once we get beyond the gruff exterior .

Jim

I wonder if he'll accept the invite to enlighten us all on the depths of Joyce?

Otherwise, JR's post might just look to be another one of those arguments from authority...

This kind of stupid argument from authority is not restricted to the arts, of course, and it can be found in such comments as these from our own Dr. Goode:

"First, James, you should check out metaethics.

"Metaethics attempts to answer such questions as which definitions of 'ethics' would be acceptable to some sizable group. It turns out that the Objectivist definition of 'ethics' isn't one of them."

First, note how he arbitrarily imputes an ignorance to his opponent -- and, then, how he proceeds to assume some significance to the mere fact that "a sizable" if otherwise undefined "group" does, or "would," for some unknown reason, find something "acceptable" or not -- and that we should not only care but, seemingly, that we should take for granted that this sets the standard of truth.

Now, that's risible.

The ironic thing is that when I meet people like the book snobs and I come across a writer I've read like Joyce, we always end up disagreeing about what was good and what was bad. Joyce was a terrible novelist. However, my first introduction to Joyce was through his short stories which were terrific.

I highly recommend people read his short story collection: The Dubliners. Joyce wrote in the context of the latter stages of British colonial oppression and the oppressive intrusion of the Irish Catholic church in people's daily lives. His short stories have an earthy, life-filled quality of modest people making the best of their circumstances. But of course, the book snobs would prefer to wallow in Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake.

Jim

Why don't you start a thread to discuss Joyce -- so you can correct my ignorance?

That way, maybe someone would have a tiny reason to expect that you might know your ass from such a hole?

. . . to find a more ignorant remark than this:

"For a healthy belly-laugh at the childish, the excruciatingly dumb and the absurd, of course, one can do no better than Joyce, Proust and all the other stark naked emperors of contemporary lit. Like the rest of the fraud of modern art, in reality, these are the shallowest of waters passing as deep only because they are so damned muddy."

Then again, why should I expect Valliant to know his ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to James Joyce?

JR

Lacking any serious argument or objection, she used empty laughter as an argument from authority.

This is the standard MO of your literary snob.

For a healthy belly-laugh at the childish, the excruciatingly dumb and the absurd, of course, one can do no better than Joyce, Proust and all the other stark naked emperors of contemporary lit. Like the rest of the fraud of modern art, in reality, these are the shallowest of waters passing as deep only because they are so damned muddy.

So, I wonder: what are her favorites?

Ms. Miller never understood that "philosophy" in the first place if she could think it "grandiosely heartless" and/or a contradiction to the fellow's sweet disposition. But her statement also confesses an abiding fear and loathing of it if she must wield her harshest weapons but, transparently, still not know where exactly to strike her blows.

Absent any substance, she was left with only the superior chuckle of a mustache-adding vandal -- an anticipatory ridiculing of anyone who might challenge her "authority" or good taste -- one that she knew wouldn't be challenged.

James and Robert, I think you're right it is a generally stupid proposition in the first place that what you read should matter - but it is still fun to laugh at those who actually think it should be a problem.

I found the original essay from the NY times that the article was based upon. Here, RACHEL DONADIO, tells how the whole Ayn Rand no sex turn-off happened to someone she knows.

"These days, thanks to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, listing your favorite books and authors is a crucial, if risky, part of self-branding. When it comes to online dating, even casual references can turn into deal breakers. Sussing out a date’s taste in books is “actually a pretty good way — as a sort of first pass — of getting a sense of someone,” said Anna Fels, a Manhattan psychiatrist and the author of “Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives.” “It’s a bit of a Rorschach test.” To Fels (who happens to be married to the literary publisher and writer James Atlas), reading habits can be a rough indicator of other qualities. “It tells something about ... their level of intellectual curiosity, what their style is,” Fels said. “It speaks to class, educational level.”

Pity the would-be Romeo who earnestly confesses middlebrow tastes: sometimes, it’s the Howard Roark problem as much as the Pushkin one. “I did have to break up with one guy because he was very keen on Ayn Rand,” said Laura Miller, a book critic for Salon. “He was sweet and incredibly decent despite all the grandiosely heartless ‘philosophy’ he espoused, but it wasn’t even the ideology that did it. I just thought Rand was a hilariously bad writer, and past a certain point I couldn’t hide my amusement.” (Members of theatlasphere.com, a dating and fan site for devotees of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead,” might disagree.)"

It’s Not You, It’s Your Books.

The real crime here is how this is supposed to substitute for serious literary discussion.

When these "snobs" are actually called upon to talk about things like plot and poetry, they crumble. Even when they claim that many of Rand's characters are "one-dimensional" or something, they rarely want to keep talking when a comparison is made to other "great" writers...

No, no -- a sneering argument from authority, a smug and satirical mocking of Rand's distinctive style (something many writers can only envy), or a crude attempt at ad hominem (such as the above) is all one usually gets.

At best, you'll get a "just not my cup of tea," from the more honest when they realize you've got the goods. And, inevitably, their "cup of tea" tends to be stuff like Thomas Hardy or Henry James or... oh, gee, did I nod off just thinking about them or something?... and I would rather shoot myself in the head than have to endure those again.

I certainly wouldn't nominate her for the Anthem Fellowship or the BB&T Chair in Objectivism or anything, of course.

If the question is "will Rand prevent you from 'scoring'?" -- that's one thing, but if the question is "does Jolie appreciate Rand's whole philosophy?" that's quite another.

To quote Ms. Jolie on her upcoming movie role as Dagny Taggart:

"I think [Atlas Shrugged is] a wonderful book. I'm a fan of her writing. I think it's an amazing project. It's, in many ways, a controversial and complicated project and I think it needs to be done right. There's been a lot of talk as to how that can be and 'what are the important reasons for making it?' There's a lot of really great people involved. It's being written now, and we'll see as the script comes out, how close we are. Then we'll know how close we are to possibly making it. Everybody involved, the producers involved, we all sat down around a table and we all agreed that if we couldn't do it right, if we couldn't do it justice, if along the way any one piece didn't come together like the right director or the right script, then we would all just fold it and not do it. So that's where we're at right now. We're taking it step by step, and we're going to make damn sure that it's done right."

Curiously, she also has shown some courage in calling for the U.S. to stay in Iraq, as you can read here, but not the guts to question altruism.

Angelina Jolie is a Rand admirer?

I fail to understand what part of Rand is so appealing to her?

I wonder,how the people like Tim Martin breed? Must probably by division,like amoeba. Without any sense of self, how they can love anybody?

I have to agree with James V. If anything, I would think the book snobs should worry about the effects of Sartre, Proust or O'Neill on their sex lives.

Jim

if the woman/man is scared by what books you've read then I'd say that Ayn has done you a service.

Granted that it's a good idea to hide any skin mags that you might have, but if you're having to throughly redecorate your bedroom before going on a date maybe it's not your bedroom that is the problem.

This tripe is the sort of advice sort after by those who treat sex as a competitive sport wherein the winner is defined as being the one who has the most partners.

With respect to dating, I prefer quality over quantity.

It's not even an "ARI thing."

This is the latest desperate attempt at trying to make Rand seem uncool to young men.

What possibly could be the basis for this? A poll? A study? Do they cite anything but anecdote? I wonder what they have by way of even that.

Attacks on both Rand -- and her fans -- tend to be personal, as I have observed elsewhere.

Of course, nerds with glasses are still nerds with glasses and Objectivism tends to attract those who can read books.

But, for myself, I am always delighted by the sheer quality to be found on the arms of leading Objectivists -- and, I mean, the quality of being consistently hot. In my experience, in fact, Rand readers more often have the problem of being too demanding, if anything.

Actually, an unscrupulous pseudo-Rand-fan can (and does) take advantage of the reverse effect -- those for whom Rand is straight path to the bedroom. (You will recall the consistency with which Rand's fiction is ranked among the most popular fiction for North Americans! Indeed, it's those "book snobs" who really have trouble getting a date, right?)

Then, of course, look at the famous beauties who have said they admire Rand -- from Raquel Welch to Angelina Jolie. Many a serious babe -- my wife included -- are Rand lovers.

I also have good reason to believe that we make the best lovers, too.

Far be it from me to boast, but, since they brought it up...